Thursday, 11 February 2016

STEPHEN FRY AND GOD

Stephen
Fry doesn't believe in God. But he's furious with him. I can sympathise.

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His God is an "utter
maniac" who, despite being "all seeing, all wise, all kind, all
beneficent", sits by while children die of bone cancer.

Judging by the reaction to his rant,
this is the God that other people have in mind too. It's a God I've had in
mind, and railed at, and hated.

So I'm not dismissive of the rant,
because this isn't a God plucked from nowhere, a cartoonish fantasy that nobody
with a faith has ever squared up to.

Fry knows this, because he starts his
speech by describing it as "what's known as theodicy" (Wikipedia:
"the attempt to answer the question of why a good God permits the
manifestation of evil"). People of faith have been engaged in this attempt
for thousands of years: philosophers and theologians, and those with the best
qualifications - people who have gone through the sorts of terrible things Fry
has in mind when he describes God as "utterly monstrous".

C S Lewis

CS Lewis
lost both his mother and his wife to cancer. If you really want to read some
fantastic tirades against God I'd recommend A Grief Observed over
Fry any day. Brutal.

Pete
Greig's God on Mute,
written after his wife was diagnosed with a brain tumour, should also be a
classic.

Peter Greig

Nicky
Gumbel, whose family died in the Holocaust, described Fry's question as
"the biggest moral objection to the Christian faith, and no one has really
ever come up with a satisfactory answer."

I appreciate that kind of honesty.

I watched my Mum die from cancer from
when I was ten until I was 12, and there's nothing worse than hearing attempts
to explain it that, even as a child, are utterly unconvincing (and
infuriating):

Like:

"He allowed it to happen so that good could come out of it"

Or

"It means that you'll be able to help other people who have gone
through it".

NO.

I don't want this to turn into a
Bible study, but having read the thing cover to cover (it took me two years and
to be honest I skipped the bits about measuring things in cubits), I can
confirm that Fry's material has been doing the rounds for a while.

"Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.
Why do you hide your face
and forget our misery and oppression?"
Psalm 44:23-24

I don't have the answer to Fry's
question.

But I have rejected his God.

I can't, and don't, believe in a God
who is "capricious, mean-minded, stupid".

Neither do
I believe in the sort of heaven presented in thefilm on death produced by the British Humanist
Association, which he narrated - a place you hope to scrape into if you've done
enough good things to merit a reward.

To be fair, Fry was responding to the
sort of God given to him by the presenter: the bouncer at the "pearly
gates".

(Incidentally, it was quite funny
when this presenter said: "And you think you're going to get in?"

My personal impression of God post
the two-year Bible read is that he has a soft spot for ranters.

I think we're a bit embarrassed about
talking about the actual experience of faith here in the UK. But surely it's
this that enables people to struggle with theodicy but believe in, love, and
even trust in God anyway. It could be a feeling, a conversation, a dream, a
sense during a prayer that he (or she) has heard, and cares.

Fry talks about a world of "pain
and injustice" but in some of the countries that are arguably far less
shielded from this than the UK, faith is thriving.

I'll always remember interviewing a
survivor of the Cambodian genocide who became a Christian after a dream in
which he saw a church shining. And the woman who lost her husband in the
Rwandan genocide.

"I clung on to faith for a good
long time after that, and God provided such a stability through the
trauma," she told me. "But over the years it really challenged my
faith, to the point where I was wondering: how could God let that happen, and
is there really a God at all? I think in the long term, it has grounded me and
strengthened me in my faith."

So the one thing I really take issue
with is Fry's suggestion that: "The moment you banish him, your life
becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living."

It's a bit
like the atheist bus sign that
read "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life"

Pretty patronising.

I don't doubt that some people found
it liberating.

But it discounts the people who take
a huge amount of comfort and strength from their faith, precisely BECAUSE they
actually have quite a lot to worry about.

I'll end
with the bit in CS Lewis' The Magician's Nephew where
the Boy asks the Lion for a cure for his mother, who is dying of cancer:

"Up till then he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the
huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw
surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent
down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the
Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that
for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother
than he was himself."

4 comments:

I don't believe this "response" provides any answer to the question of the existence of god, nor does it show any evidence other than a regression into the oft quoted RC mantra of 'faith'. The nature of faith is extensively examined in Wikipedia and I leave the reader to explore the concept there. For my part, in relation to the blog concerning the existence of god, I see faith as blind unquestioning belief and trust, without evidence.I further understand the origins and strengthening formation of faith within the social context of the formative 'educational' (some would say 'indoctrination') of organised religion, especially here in the Irish RC church. We are certainly not encouraged to question our religious superiors!

Additionlly I think criticism of "Fry's evil god" are misguided. he simply does not believe in god, any god, good bad or indifferent! I think he rails in exasperation at the continuing religious belief systems which attempt without evidence or justification to minimise and justify the transient, dependent and imperfect realities of the evolving human condition.What I personally dislike is the vast amount of resources, financial and otherwise, being directed into organised religion, its perpetuation and maintenance, when there is so much need for those resources to be better used for the direct benefit of the disadvantaged and needy. I acknowledge many religious organisations do valuable charity work, but question the extent that work is directed to greatest need or to self promoting aims.MMM

"I see faith as blind unquestioning belief and trust, without evidence" - that is your oft-repeated "mantra" MMM.

You are welcome to stick with it. We will see who is right in the end.

But do not presume to look down your nose, at people as rational and intelligent as you are, who believe in God, who have a loving relationship with Him - a relationship that motivates them to make a loving and compassionate contribution - to this world we all inhabit together.

God is our Father (Parent) in heaven creator and lord of all things...if I remember my national school pre communion catechism. Distorted pictures of God are the products of those who propose. God like any good parent wants us to learn through doing. Every child has to learn to walk and trips along the way.Humanity experiences many falls